Front Office Football Central - Boston Marathon Changes, Biased?

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Boston Marathon Changes, Biased?

Elite women to start before men at Boston Marathon

Feb. 10, 2004
SportsLine.com wire reports

BOSTON -- The first runner to cross the finish line at this year's Boston Marathon will be a woman.

Race officials are changing the starting format so the elite female runners will leave Hopkinton 25 minutes before the rest of the field, said Jack Fleming, a spokesman for the Boston Athletic Association.

The early start is one of the most drastic changes in the race's 108-year history.

The change most likely will bring the top women to Boston's Back Bay eight to 10 minutes ahead of the first male finisher.

Traditionally, all runners have started at noon, with the elite men and women moved to the front of the field to ensure they aren't caught in the crowd of thousands who run the race recreationally. But that has meant top female finishers can be lost among second-tier male runners who finish about 10 minutes behind the winner.

The wheelchair race will still start first, but that will be moved up to ensure the wheelchair racers are ahead of the women, Fleming said

AP NEWS
The Associated Press News Service

Copyright 2004, The Associated Press, All Rights Reserved

This got me thinking. How do they determine the elite women in this event? I can understand putting the elite men and women at the front of the race, but allowing them to start earlier, makes it unfair to all of the recreational runners that are women. Now, they have practically no chance at even coming close to the elite, where in years past they did have a slim chance.

There's two ways to qualifier for the marathon. One is a time trial of a few different runs throught the year. Another is to raise enough money more charity. I would think if you qualified in the time trial you'd qaulify as elite.

This does suck for the commone woman though who will now start about 40 minutes after the elite women

So does that mean that the difference between an elite runner and a recreational one is only ten minutes? I would have thought it would be much more.... interesting.

Elite women are invited, professional runners. For this year's boston marathon, the common woman qualifying time was 3:40. Elite women should all run well under three hours. There may be some common women who can run with the elites for part of the time, but not many. Also, because of the Champion Chip technology, whoever has the fastest time will be declared the winner, not necessarily whoever finishes first (again this doesn't really happen, because of the difference in quality of the elites vs. the field, but it could).

Qualifying for Boston is an incredible achievement, but it is still on a different plane from being an invited, elite runner.